12 months of stepping outside the comfort zone by trying new things weekly and by challenging deep-set consumption habits for increased freedom in every realm of life.
Coffee, you haunt my mornings. Your tantalizing scent beckons me from the endless coffee shops in this city of Espresso, tickling my nostrils to awake a deep yearning to feel you warming the mug in my hands, pleasing my taste buds with your robust flavors. I want to savor your aftertaste on my tongue long after you’ve entered me to penetrate my digestive tract with your caffeinated powers. Oh, Coffee.
Coffee, my coffee: you are not unlike a lover who has been called away from me for business in Hungary or Cairo. I want to be with you so badly, but I can’t. Okay, technically I can, but I won’t. Because I’m a masochist? Maybe, but it’s more than that. I need to prove to myself that I can be as happy and fulfilled without you as I am with you, and that, in the future, I can enjoy your company without such attachment. It isn’t healthy to crave something as badly as I crave you, Coffee.
Coffee, all the yogis say you’re no good for me, but they don’t understand what a special relationship you and I have. To pass the time until we’re reunited, I’ve been seeing Rooibos Tea, who is quite nice. But as much as I enjoy Rooibos’s company, nothing compares to you. Without you, the world seems a little foggier, sleepier, blander. I walk through my days a pale imitation of myself when I’m with you; I’ve little of my usual pep and vibrancy. Poor Rooibos probably thinks I’m a total square but you know better, Coffee.
Good god, Coffee, you really have a hold on me. It’s closing in on four weeks since I quit you, but you know as well as I do that I haven’t *really* quit you. I may have put some physical distance between us, but I can’t stop thinking about you. Every morning, I call your name, I swear, I do. I’m counting the days until we are reunited, when I can again touch my lips to you, and drink you in. Oh, Coffee, my Coffee.
So when I announced that I was giving up caffeine for June the other day, my friend SW sent me a note, telling me that she was playing the world's tiniest violin for me.
And here it is...
Okay. Maybe I deserve a little ribbing for my woe-is-me-I-want-caffeine 'tude. SW, like many of my friends, chose to give up caffeine during her first pregnancy and lived through 8-9 months of limited caffeine intake without any major whining. The idea of forgoing caffeine for that long truly makes me shudder and shake, so I realize that my month of going without caffeine is a relatively small sacrifice.
Still, when I caught the fragrant aroma of CW's coffee yesterday at breakfast, I felt this wave of melancholy wash over me as I thought nostalgically, Remember when you had a cup of coffee at breakfast too? And last night, at my monthly writing group meeting, when the host cracked out the Vosges chocolate bar, I was nearly overcome by the beauty of those rich, dark chocolate squares. Cue the tiny violin.
If I can put my chocolate and coffee coveting aside, I am actually faring rather well without the caffeine. Sunshine helps, and Seattle was blessedly sunny over the weekend. Today is more of a struggle, with blah overcast skies. It is almost 2 PM and I don't feel like I've really waken up yet, despite doing my AM yoga, doing my 10 daily hops, going for a run, showering, and working.
The sleepy-day situation is not helped any by the fact that it's pledge drive week on KEXP. (Give, y'all!) Pledge drive means less music, and rocking out sometimes helps me wake up. So I need some tunes, some really great wake-up tunes. I'm asking for your support: please send me fantastic, fun wake-up song suggestions for my Who Needs Caffeine? playlist.
Put your song suggestions below, or email them to me. Please do not send me song suggestions in the following categories: death metal, Katy Perry-style pop, anything with Auto Tune, or country. It isn't that I don't occasionally enjoy songs in those categories, but they're more likely to annoy me, and they just don't get my engine going first thing in the morning. I'm looking for happy, upbeat, feel-good songs, a la John in the Morning's Friday song selection, "Show Me" by Mint Royale:
Isn't that a happy upbeat song? I will post my compiled wake-up song list later this month, so you all can get your spunk on without the caffeine too!
Now that I've moaned about not consuming caffeine this month, let's talk about what I'm adding more of this month to my life. It's cold, it's sugary, it melts... Yup, I'm talking about Ice Cream.
My first notable frivolous purchase after my budget-focused May was this:
Now is an electric ice cream machine really, bought off of craigslist for $10 really a frivolous purchase? Given the fact that I already have a beautiful old-fashioned hand-crank ice cream maker with a robin's egg blue-painted tub, yes. Given the fact that said old-fashioned hand-crank ice cream maker won't turn right now, and getting it fixed will likely cost more than $10, maybe not.
So I ran out and nabbed this big, loud, electric baby to keep me in ice cream through the summer Friday morning and whipped up a batch of custard-style strawberry ginger ice cream for dinner that night. I referred to the ginger ice cream recipe in David Lebovitz's cookbook, The Perfect Scoop, which is much like this one from his website, except without white chocolate. Meanwhile I let the strawberries macerate in lime juice and sugar--I added those right before mixing the whole thing in the machine.
This is a "Day After" photo. Look how big that 4-quart can is!
The results were DELISH.
This bowl was for breakfast on Saturday.
My goal is to make ice cream every week this summer, when I'm not on vacation. After looking at Lebovitz's cookbook and website, here are a few flavors I'd like to try:
So would you like to eat ice cream with me this summer? Perhaps, if you suggest some super awesome wake-up songs for my playlist, you can! From your song suggestions, I'll select my 3 or 3 favorite, most wakey-wakey-helpful songs. If you live in the greater Seattle area, and your song makes me twist and shout in the AM hours, I'll make a batch of ice cream in a flavor that tickles your fancy to share with you. You ask: "Is this a bribe?" Why, yes, it is.
I write to you on No Caffeine June Eve in my Operation Consumption Liberation. And physically, I'm good to go for a month without coffee, tea, colas, Barq's root beer, Mountain Dew, chocolate, Excedrin, NoDoz, and any other caffeinated-energy drink/concoction. When I say "physically," I mean that I have been cutting down my caffeine level semi-steadily over the last five weeks to the point where today I went completely caffeine free. Now going without caffeine for a day does happen from time to time in my world. But going without caffeine for thirty days straight--Ha! Are you crazy? (Answer: clearly!)
My May 12 morning cup of coffee, fully loaded of regular
Unlike this past month or, say, No Alcohol March, I've been actively preparing for this month of my OCL, "training" if you will, since late April. I've had caffeine-deficit migraines before. I had a few this month while cutting back. They suck. So for my morning cup of coffee, I slowly started mixing decaf coffee beans with my caffeinated beans in the coffee grinder. I gradually increased the decaf and decreased the regular. About two weeks ago, I stopped regular beans all together. I sucked down decaf and its approximately 13mg of caffeine for a week, and then for the past several days, I drank Yogi Tea's Mayan Cocoa Spice tea (5mg per cup). And today I drank Provence Vanilla Rooibos tea, which someone generously bought at The Teacup to have on hand at his place for me during No Caffeine Consumption month.
My May 12 morning cup of regular poses with a regular-sized cup of coffee. Sniff.
I wasn't quite so conscious about cutting my consumption of chocolate. Dear GOD, I love chocolate. I wasn't going to include chocolate in my No Caffeine month. Then, while I was researching the various amounts of caffeine in coffee and decaf, I saw that a 1.45-oz serving of a Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Bar has 31mg of caffeine, and a regular Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar has more than my Yogi tea (mind you, I like REALLY dark chocolate best). So I decided that I better quit chocolate this month as well, to make sure I'm not secretly feeding my caffeine addiction.
Espresso Dark Chocolate--caffeine frenzy!
This leads me to ask: Am I really addicted to caffeine? Answer: I don't know, I'm not a doctor! I can tell you that when I smell coffee in the morning, it makes me smile. Except for the last few days when I've had to decline, and then the smell of coffee makes me want to whine and kick things. Seriously. I can also tell you that the prospect of eating good chocolate makes me feel a little funny in the stomach; it is similar to how a gal feels upon reflection the morning after she kisses a super awesome someone with super awesome kissing powers for the very first time. I LIKE that feeling. A LOT.
Only hot cocoa can make me smile like that.
So giving caffeine the boot this month may feel at times like I'm mutilating a part of my soul. I expect suffering. Please, send me Celtic sea salt caramels (these ones, please) and Fresca.
To counterbalance the withdrawal of my favorite drug, I'm adding a few things to my month. 1. More Ice Cream (without chocolate or coffee, of course). 2. 10 hops in the morning (to help wake me up, and according to my yoga teacher, to build bone density). 3. 30 minutes minimum of yoga in the mornings (to make me dewy-eyed and strong and pliable).
And now I'm off to bed, so that I'm not too desperate for coffee in the morning!
